By Colleen Gundlach

What started as a small company with just five employees across the street from Lime Rock Park has grown to a worldwide business employing more than 50 people in the center of North Canaan. In a nondescript building on Railroad Street, the Vibrant Health company markets their food-based supplements throughout the United States and in six different countries around the world.

Eighteen years ago, Mark Timon, a clinical nutrition expert, developed a product called Green Vibrance, which he marketed as a “comprehensive, restorative superfood” to support healthy digestion, detoxify the human body, boost immunity and provide antioxidant protection. After years of research and adjustments in formula, the product was approved, and Timon began marketing it from his Falls Village office. Calling his business NuForm, he, with the help of his small staff, produced Green Vibrance and handled all the details of the business, including occasionally loading and unloading the trucks themselves.

Meanwhile, New York City sales and marketing executive Ted Parker was running out of alternatives for healing his repeated respiratory infections, seasonal colds and poor digestion. Regimen after regimen of antibiotics provided no relief. Eventually, a naturopathic physician introduced him to Green Vibrance and “in two weeks,” he says, “my gut health improved and I felt better.”

Parker’s wife, Paige, is also a firm believer in natural remedies for healing. For years she had suffered from chronic systemic candidia, which left her feeling ill and overwhelmingly fatigued. Like her husband, she didn’t find relief until she was put on nutritional supplements by a Manhattan naturopath. From then on, her dream was to open a natural foods store.

In the early 2000’s, Parker remembers, “Paige dragged me to a trade show, where we happened to meet Mark Timon and his wife.” It was this chance meeting that changed Parker’s life, because Timon happened to be in the market for a sales director, which was Ted Parker’s forte. Timon hired him to fill the position, which Parker held for five years.

Then, in 2005, Timon decided to go into semiretirement and turn the company over to someone new. After two years of working out the details, the Parkers became the new owners of the business, which they renamed Vibrant Health. “It was very exciting,” says Parker, “but the hardest thing I have ever done in my life.” Timon stayed on as the company’s clinical nutrition expert, developing and upgrading the Vibrant Health products.

The company moved to Ashley Falls Road in North Canaan, but quickly outgrew even that space and is now located at 99 Railroad Street. While its corporate offices are located here in northwestern Connecticut, the products are produced in Long Island, and distributed from Canaan and Reno, Nev.

Paige and Ted Parker live in Carmel, N.Y., where they are raising their two children. They commute three hours round-trip each day to Canaan, where they both tend to put in long hours. They have decided not to move the company closer to their home because, Ted Parker says, “there are phenomenal people working at our Canaan office. I don’t want to lose them.” In addition, he says that the company is scaled for success. “I retained the good people who were with the company and hired more as the business grew. These are good people who know their jobs. At some point the company just began to run itself with these people.”

Vibrant Health now offers a full line of nutritional supplements, including Maximum Vibrance, one of their newest items, which is an all-in-one “multi-supplement and advanced daily future food” designed “to increase vitality and energy.”

The company is working on a new supplement, Life Preserver, intended to help cancer patients feel better and to help keep small cancer cells from becoming big problems. It is currently in research and development, but Parker is hopeful it will be on the market soon.

For more information about Vibrant Health, go to vibranthealth.com.